How to give feedback on Chess Life Columns

All Things Chess
1

Hi, I had been a very inactive life member for a long time and just now created my site account and am new to the forums and am unrated as a player.

I was reading the October, 2017 Chess Life issue and looked at “The Practical Endgame” column and it’s Problem 1. I did not find a win for White, finding it to be a draw. Then I read the answer and feel that White made a mistake on move 109 that let Black win. The only way I could find to give feedback was letters to the editor so I emailed to that address this past weekend. But then I thought about looking this web site and getting around to creating an account so I could access the forums. Is there a proper forum here for giving such feedback?

(I did not give details here of the correct move(s) and why, so as not to spoil it for any who wish to look for themselves, and I don’t know the conventions here for such things.)
Richard Menninger

2

You can post comments on Chess Life articles here, but your comments may not be seen by the authors of the articles. Writing a letter to the editor, as you did, will give your comments a wider audience.

Comments on Chess Life Online articles can be posted on Chess Life Online, in the “Leave a comment” section after the end of each article.

3

Welcome!

If you played in any US Chess rated tournaments in your earlier life, you should not be unrated. “Once rated, always rated.”

If, however, all your previous events were before 1991, then US Chess probably has no electronic record of your previous rating. When you play in your next event, you should probably let the organizer know that you may have had a rating once upon a time. If this message gets to the US Chess office along with the rating report for the new event, they may be able to dig up your old rating, and include it properly in the calculation for your new rating.

Even if the office can’t find your old rating right away, if they manage to find it later they can still revise your new rating properly at that time.

When you tell the organizer about your possible old rating, it will help US Chess identify it properly if you tell them your old address (city and state) at the time, along with the approximate date of your previous event and the approximate rating you received from that event.

See you at a tournament soon?

Bill Smythe

4

It would have been at the Parkway Chess Club in Cincinnati, OH in that one chess tournament in the Spring of 1962. It may have been called the Cincinnati Chess Championship. The game with Rea Hayes would have been the last I could have played. I cannot remember if I had played a game or so before that one. I do not know if the tournament ran to completion. Holding them one night a week for several weeks is hard to do. I would say I have 1 or 2 tournament games, if they did not abort the whole thing, hardly enough for even a provisional rating.

I have heard that there is a Rea Hayes (Memorial) Tournament in Tennessee (I just looked in the May 2017 issue of Chess Life: it was June 10-11 this year). He was a really nice person.

5

LOL I just realized I had said some info in the letter and not here as I wrote a WHO AM I section to start it. So here is that section (with a couple of typos corrected):

"WHO AM I:
Like many, I learned to play chess when I was young, while I was in high school, when another boy in my neighborhood was looking for a beginner to beat. I felt that was a great way to learn, and bought some books with my modest allowance. But when I got good enough to hold my own, he refused to play me anymore. I had trouble ever finding anyone to play, something that plagued much of my life.

I did try once to play in the city chess championship, games played once a week at night, early 1962. This was while I was a college freshman, second semester. The city chess club was downtown, a ways away from campus (I lived on campus my freshman year). I was playing the tournament director in an early round, a chess expert who had won tournaments, named Rea Hayes who was an actuary. I had a midterm in second semester calculus the next day and I had forgotten my textbook. So I decided to play the King’s Gambit (did not really know it that well), figuring it would be over quick and I could gat back to the dorm before lockup. Well, at some point I won a piece, and then he threw in another, and then sat and thought for a very long time. I did win the game easily but got in trouble being out of the dorm late at night and had to quit the tournament. And that was my only tournament experience, though I continued to buy books here and there.

After college (BS and MS), I went to work at Bell Labs. Eventually, in the mid-1970s I ran into Dennis Cooper, one of the two main authors of the COKO chess program. He had recently joined Bell Labs and was happy to have my help on the program, though they eventually decided to retire it.

I did mostly keep a membership in the USCF through it all, and during one of their cash crunches, I bought a life membership they offered to help. But I had gotten married to a women with kids and eventually had to stop buying books and studying chess, which lasted for a quarter of a century or more."

It was mid-1980s to a couple of years ago, so more like 30 years away from chess.

6

If you played in just one tournament in 1962, US Chess probably has an old 3-by-5 rating card for you (on microfiche). I worked at the US Chess Office in 1972 (Fischer boom) helping to update ratings, and I remember those old rating cards. Your card will probably have your name, home state at the time (NJ? PA? OH?), date (but not name) of your tournament, your post-event rating from that tournament, and (perhaps) the number of games (2?) on which the rating is based. The information in this paragraph is what the office will need to update your rating.

The best time to send this info is when you play in your next event. Somehow you should convince the organizer of that event to submit that info – perhaps in the form of an email cut-and-paste of the above paragraph – along with the electronic tournament report the organizer will submit. That organizer will know more than I do about the details, and may even know what the appropriate email address would be at the office.

Small world. I was well acquainted with David Slate, co-author of the CHESS 5.0 (or whatever version) program at Northwestern University. His program, along with COKO and about a dozen others, were regular entrants in the annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) tournaments which drew a fair amount of TV publicity. I think David Slate’s program won the tournament multiple times, perhaps defeating COKO along the way.

I look forward to your rating appearing on MSA after your next tournament!

Bill Smythe

7

Hi,

Dealing with the other part of your post, this position looks like a win for Black. Here is the position with Black to move after move on move 107:

The game Aronian-Caruana Sinquefield Cup 2017 continued: 107… Bxg3+ 108. Kxh5 Kf5 109. Rd5+ Be5 110. Kh4 Rc4+ and White resigned, as after either King move, 111 K-any Rc2 wins due to the threat of mate.

You said you feel that 109 Rd5+ is an error, and that White could draw. I might agree that 109 Rd5 leads to a shorter win, but it appears that White is lost in any case. Consider the position at 109 with White to move:

White can’t deal with the mate threats:
109. Ra2 Be5 110. Rf2+ (110 Kh4 Bf6+ 111 Kh5 Rh3#) Bf4 111. Kh4 Rd3 112. Rf1 Rd6 113. Kh3 Rd2 114. Rh1 Kg5 115. Rg1+ Kh5 116. Rh1 Rf2 117. Ra1
Rh2#
109. Rd8 Bd6 110. Kh6 (110. Kh4 Be7+ 111. Kh5 Rh3#) 110… Be5 111. Rf8+ (111. Kh7 Rh3+ 112. Kg8 Rh8+) 111… Bf6 112. Kh7 Rh3+ 113. Kg8 Kg6 wins
109. Rd1 Bf4 110. Kh4 Bg5+ 111. Kh5 Rh3#

I don’t see a try that saves White.

8

Here is what I said was wrong with move 109 in the letter:
"On move 109, White went for the immediate rank check, but it was in the file that would be right next to where the bishop would be to block it. That is bad because the bishop then protects against an immediate move tho the ranks just above and below the one the K & B would be on. Yet those moves are crucial to drawing the game.

But if the rook moves immediately to files a, b, or even c, while the black R & bishop are on the same rank, that check is still there, and the rook can shuffle between the good files for delaying moves. I gave it to my Chess Genius Pro and it did 109.Ra2 while at “Tour. 6” setting. It did the preceding moves as specified in the answer (it playing both sides alternately). Assuming someone might be interested, I decided to email this to you."

It is very good at this sort of tactical position and never found a win, both in tour. 6 (40/2hr,then 20/1h increments) with a full 2hr for the start position nor in Analysis (from Menu) [I stopped it eventually, but maybe still too soon]. This was likely too deep for the Chess Genius Pro, so it did not find this bishop move. I will look at this more when I have time so as to learn in detail yet another limitation of the CG Pro. But then this is actually not a 1500 Level problem then. Maybe someday I will be able to find a line this deep. But there will be a lot of tactics burn-in to go to get there. It could have also been that the unit needed a full reset (the recessed button underneath) while it is off.

9

Unfortunately, this is a simple tablebase position. The five-man position is a mate in 22, where the position before Kxh5 is mate in 23. Use this link as it is much better than any computers that don’t include it with six men or fewer.

http://chessok.com/?page_id=361

Try any moves you like for White and I guarantee it will mate you that quickly.

Alex Relyea

10

Alex Relyea is correct about the tablebase aspect - I hadn’t even stopped to think about that, and its a tool that can be very helpful.

But I think from a learning perspective - it feels like your mental approach to the position is fundamentally flawed. “Maybe someday I will be able to find a line this deep. But there will be a lot of tactics burn-in to go to get there.” is the clue.

In instructing, I find that the challenge is helping people to see what is right in front of them. Tactics flow from positional considerations - and if we think about positional considerations FIRST in this case, the tactics come more easily. Consider this position again:

Let White try 109 Ra2. How does Black play for the win?

The issue is one of maximizing the value of Black’s pieces, and minimizing the value of White’s pieces. White’s King is already limited on the edge of the board, and potentially subject to mate threats from both the 1st rank side and the 8th rank side of the h-file.

109…Be5! centralizes the Bishop, therefore maximizing its potential. The Bishop covers h2, limiting White’s Rook in defense of h-file mate threats. The Bishop blocks potential checks along the 5th rank. The Bishop covers g3 and g7, helping to keep the White King trapped on the h-file with respect to the potential mate threats.

When we SEE how good the Bishop is on this square, and IGNORE any tactics calculations for a moment, the move selection suddenly becomes much simpler. The Bishop is so good - and the Black Rook is threatening 110…Rh3#.

This is about SEEING the good Bishop move, not about tactics. AFTER the good Bishop move, the tactics are simpler since there is a threat of mate, only one line is long and a bit hard, but it continues to follow the principle of bettering the Black pieces and minimizing the White pieces:

110 Rh2 Bxh2
110 Kh4 Bf6+ 111 Kh5 Rh3#
110 Kh6 Rh3#
110 Rf2+ (the only move left) Bf4 (keeping the King trapped and guarding h6) 111 Kh4 (to stop mate) Rd3! (actually, any move on the 3rd. This is the hard move to find - the point is that the White Rook is forced off the second rank) 112 Rf1 Rd6 (mate threat) 113 Kh3 Rd2 (mate threat) 114 Rh1 — again Black has been working to LIMIT the White pieces, and to maximize his own, this PROCESS continues: 114 …Kg5 115 Rg1+ Kh5 116 Rh1 Rf2 Zugzwang.

I hope this helps in terms of your studies!

11

I forgot about those tables being around, too. They are good for analysis like this, but doing them over the board by yourself is another matter. Are there tools that take a position and show you the tree of best moves for each ply to help you train? It would not be that hard to do.

It was not a system reset issue for the CG Pro, at least this time. I have had that situation come up though. It just does not go enough plies deep for the early positions. It cannot find 109. … Be5 at Tour. 6 Level setting. But once past that, it produces moves matching the moves in the sequence kbachler provided with two exception areas. The Black rook moves in 111. thru 113. are different in that 111. …Ra3 replaces 111. … Rd3 causing some following moves to be slightly different and interacts with the second exception area. The second area is what I call the cannon fodder defense (in this case, White sacrificing the only piece left: the rook) at best time to give the best delay of mate. The way CG Pro plays it, the 111. …Ra3 line gives mate on Black move 123, which is mate in 17 from the start position and the R. … Rd3 gives mate on Black move 124.

It is Black’s role to always find the move that gives the quickest mate given the best defense by White, and White’s role is to always find the the move that delays mate the most given the best attacking move by Black. So in CG Pro’s universe, the Ra3 move is better. But that line is mate in 17, so White has not done the best that can be done in one or more moves.

Dick

12

I had to get up very early yesterday to take my wife to the airport and was so tired last night that I did a face plant at the computer and until 6AM when I awoke enough to go elsewhere LOL. Toward the end l may not have been as clear as I would have liked for both public and private conversations.

There is yesterday’s most recent post by kbachler I should address but I will say stuff first. Then I will address that post bit by bit.

First, I want to thank all the people have contributed to all the threads to which I have posted, as everyone very friendly and helpful in all sorts of ways. That is very much appreciated, and actually letting people actually know I feel that way is something I am trying to get better at, as I tend to be rather quiet most of the time.

When I was young, in high school, after the neighborhood kid who played me several times a week when I was a beginner until I could hold my own then refused to play me anymore. He was not interested in getting better even though I pointed out that best way to learn is to play people better than you were at the time, as happened for me. So most of my skill came from studying what chess books I could find.

In college, a majority of what few chess games with others I could get happened in the student union with them sitting at the board while I was in a chair facing away from the board. If I got distracted by something and needed to refresh my memory of it, I would just replay the game the game in my head as I always remembered the moves. So I had a strong ability to do chess in my head including tree searches. I understood tree searching so well that when I was doing “upper level” math courses and working in the school’s computer center, though on one of IBM’s rather arcane early computers (a noop instruction took 160 microseconds to execute, and real instructions took twice that or more), my nominal advisor in math proposed a combinatorial number theory problem to think about, I just sat right down and wrote in assembly language program to do an exhaustive search with cut-off theorems used data it already generated to be faster at the next case. My program on that abysmally slow computer was radically faster than some college professor written programs running the fast computers of that time (for instance:CDC 3400 or CDC 3600 where real instructions took around 1 microsecond). It turns out my advisor was working on his PhD across town under a fairly well known professor there, and had lots of people (including former students who were then professors in other schools) working on this, to see who would do well. Anyway, I knew about tree searching only from playing chess, and all aspects of it were easy for me, including doing chess searches in my head. But some king hunts could still be a little bit hard if the tree was somewhat bushy. That took practice and I had little time to practice chess. I was working almost full time, taking a full undergraduate load and a nominal full graduate school load at the same time.

I wound up writing up the algorithm for that search as a thesis for my masters in math, which was the first and likely only original work done for a MS in math there.

Anyhow, you get the picture, I could do chess in my head quite readily. But the real world kept me too busy to spend much time on chess, both in college an later at Bell Labs. I had several chances to get a PhD under well known people. One was an offer by my advisor’s advsor who was a well known professor who was the University of Cincinnati to go set up high power math/comp sci department at a rather new University of California campus. He wanted me to be his personal assistant for applying computers to hard math problems. But this was when the draft for the Vietnam War was on the horizon.

I was also recruited to go interview at Bell Labs, a two day interview process. The first day was with the military systems division, the second day was with non-military work at the Holmdel location that had the “transistor” water tower. The afternoon guy there was gearing to apply monte carlo simulation methods to various hard problems of practical value. I had to sit through some of his underlings covering some probability and statistics that I wound up already knowing. But when got to him it was much more interesting. It turns out he was also a professor at Columbia University, splitting his time between there and Bell Labs. Even though I had minimal background, when he started in on the black board on what they were going to do, it all just clicked so thoroughly that we spent the time brainstorming things he could try and ways he could make it better. He wound up wanting me to both work for him in Holmdel and get my PhD under him at Columbia.

After him, I went to HR where I was told I had offers from each of the interviewing organizations and had to pick then which offer. I verified the only question mattered at that time, did the military systems division jobs come with a draft deferment? I had thought it out before coming that I did not mind serving my country, but I felt it should involve my genuine talents. So I chose one of those jobs. Getting a PhD never had a chance, much like chess always wound up mostly being pushed aside by real life, except for buying some books and a little reading and a couple of the 1980s Chess computers.

I got married in the mid 1970s, she had two kids. I did a little chess [with my stepson] and his friends, but not much. In the mid 1980s my wife wanted me to stop spending time and money on chess and I acquiesced, as there were a lot of demands on my time. So I did not have a reading on the state of my chess abilities for close to 30 years.

The kids got married and having their own kids. And then the boy’s kids should some interest in chess a few years ago, but at a time when I was not feeling well and it hurt to even try to think about chess. So I put them off until a later time. Later I looked at some of the chess but found stuff was harder for me, which concerned me some though I had this sense that there were outside causes though none under my control, though that would not make it any different if it proves to be the case or not. And then there also started to become more widely known that there were discoveries about the inherent plasticity of the mind/brain even in old age where the right kinds of use can start a restoration process and chess is thought to be something that might work that way.

So I decided to do it explicitly for that as the guiding issue and see if I can gain back what I had and even surpass it by really spending time on it that I was never able to do before now. I have made some gains, though it still is a work in progress. But I am convinced one can succeed at battling such atrophy of mental skills.

kbachler said: ‘But I think from a learning perspective - it feels like your mental approach to the position is fundamentally flawed. “Maybe someday I will be able to find a line this deep. But there will be a lot of tactics burn-in to go to get there.” is the clue.’

And what I said to start this post is the context with which to understand it. What I do serves two masters: reversing atrophy from disuse and getting better in ways that will lead to better performance in a tournament setting at all speeds.

Also I see tactics recognition is akin to learning words and phrases, where chess moves and other rules are the alphabet and grammar, and strategy and positional considerations are how to write powerful prose and brilliant moving poetry. But tournament chess is a serious time crunch and if you take way too much time just recognizing the words and phrase and their basic meanings, your are destined to lose or totally annoy your grandchildren (like I did). In chess it is usually much harder to see the words and phrases and their meanings than in literature because we actually try to make that easy, even big print books for those who need that. Imagine all words being imbedded in a massive clutter of random letters. That is what it seems like until you train your tactics recognition well. When you train them thoroughly, your see them and don’t make mistakes based on them being lost in the clutter. Most could use more of it, and it would be a quick easy way to increase their ratings.

In fact, many good tactics books [and related guide books] cover the issue of amateurs failing win material because of a positional weakness that results when the weakness has a much lower effective value than the material that would be won.

Positional considerations are great for candidate move generation as long as some other considerations also generate candidate moves. But you don’t even start there for an effective move thought process. First is: are you in check? Does your opponents move have a threat you need to notice? And did it leave a weakness? Did it ignore a threat of yours? If so, what are the relatives values of the two threats? Ah, do we time to look at positional considerations that are not also tactical in key ways? And so on. It takes time to refine the process you use, but it can become an effective automatic thing that takes but a blink of the eye to get to where you need to begin to spend the time this move. Each successive move has its own trigger pattern. A good move thought process allows for that.

You do get to where that goes quick, if you work at it diligently, much like the tactical panorama positional considerations live in. When you have your candidates you need to do your “is it safe” check on each of them. And if you are in check and there are no safe moves, congratulate your opponent on their win.

LOL It is midnight for me already. I think I will try to avoid another face plant at the computer tonight.

Dick